


Yesterday's Fabric

by the_rck



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Gen, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-18 01:39:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9359951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rck/pseuds/the_rck
Summary: Most girls stay, but some don't. Agnes deals with them all.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Missy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/gifts).



> Written for Fandom Stocking 2016.
> 
> Title from "First Hour," a poem by Luis Munoz.

Agnes watched the oddly dressed girl kick her way out of the lair that had been created for her. The girl scrambled over the piles of other people’s possessions, not minding that she was disturbing the quiet or throwing carefully sorted things out of their proper order. Agnes continued watching until the girl was out of sight and didn’t actually turn away until she could no longer hear the girl at all.

None of the other inhabitants of the memory storehouse seemed to have noticed the girl’s passing. Most of them, Agnes knew, were too focused on their own mementos, on not losing any single precious thing.

"My job to welcome them," she murmured. "My job to see them leave." Not that most did. They came and let their childhoods swallow them and make them old. "But some don’t." She wondered if she’d find anything worth keeping in the girl’s rejected memories. Sometimes the ones who left abandoned things more worth having than what those who stayed clutched and couldn’t bear to let go. 

She hoped the King wouldn’t punish her for failing to find the right memory to hold the girl and make her a goblin like the rest. Sometimes, he did. Other times, he didn’t. It usually depended on whether or not the girl in question managed to pass the remaining tests. 

"If she does, we’ll all pay, won’t we?" Agnes shuddered. It almost never happened, but when it did, the entire Labyrinth shook and rewrote itself. Agnes had known goblins who disappeared as reality reordered itself. Some of them returned later. Most didn’t.

Agnes sighed and turned away. "Maybe the peach was bad. It must have been that. She’ll stop somewhere along the way."


End file.
